GREEN PAPER 3: Freedoms
That Are Abolished
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Trade agreements eliminate barriers to trade like tariffs, quotas and subsidies, making it easier for the movement of goods and services across international borders. Investment agreements facilitate the movement of capital, by restricting governments' ability to limit the flow of money. Investment agreements actually provide corporations protection on their investments and their investment plans. The risk of investment then rests with governments and is paid for by people, not by the corporations who reap the profits.
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was established in 1947 after World War II, was the first major global trade agreement. In 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) incorporated GATT in addition to creating 18 other agreements to liberalize other areas of trade like intellectual property rights and agriculture.
Both NAFTA and the WTO include investment rules and policies. NAFTA contains an investor-to-state dispute settlement body (Chapter 11), which allows corporations the freedom to sue foreign governments if their corporation is not allowed to implement their full investment plan because of strict environmental or labor laws (see Protecting Corporate Profits).
The MAI was drafted to extend NAFTA's investment rules and Chapter 11 beyond the countries of North America. This agreement would have restricted governments' ability to prohibit or limit privatization of public enterprises (education, healthcare, etc.) and required the removal of performance requirements (e.g. requiring a foreign corporation to use a certain percentage of locally manufactured goods in a factory). The MAI sought to broaden the definition of investment to include all sectors of the economy; not just the commercial sector but also the service and public sectors.
In 1998, thanks to intense external and internal condemnations, the MAI was officially declared dead. Its resurrection was attempted at the WTO Seattle Ministerial in 1999, where, once again, it was put to its grave. Trade ministers are trying yet again to bring the MAI back from the dead, now in the form of the FTAA.
Since the draft of the FTAA text is not available to the public (or even to Congress) we can only speculate on what will actually be in the final text. However, we can guess what each of the negotiating groups is planning based on past trade and investment agreements (NAFTA, MAI, and WTO), and the language in the FTAA Ministerial Declarations. We also know that the negotiating groups are working closely with the WTO to ensure that WTO policies are being implemented throughout the Western Hemisphere. This will endanger environmental, labor and human rights laws that thus far have escaped the scrutiny of the WTO.
While some of the policies being drafted into the FTAA are included in NAFTA, many are not. A quick glance at the policies being drafted reveals a striking resemblance to the failed policies proposed as part of the MAI and during the Seattle Ministerial of the WTO. By incorporating provisions such as those in NAFTA, the WTO, and the MAI, the FTAA will be the most comprehensive trade and investment agreement to date. It is very obvious that the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the multinational corporations are attempting to impose their diabolical, pro-profit agenda on the Western Hemisphere, rather than globally. They have been failing at the global level, so they are going to attempt it regionally.